Ultracold Dipolar Gas of Fermionic [superscript 23]Na[superscript 40]K Molecules in Their Absolute Ground State

• Main Authors: Park, Jee Woo (Contributor), Will, Sebastian (Contributor), Zwierlein, Martin Wolfram (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics (Contributor), MIT-Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2015-05-19T13:40:03Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 We report on the creation of an ultracold dipolar gas of fermionic [superscript 23]Na[superscript 40]Kmolecules in their absolute rovibrational and hyperfine ground state. Starting from weakly bound Feshbach molecules, we demonstrate hyperfine resolved two-photon transfer into the singlet X[superscript 1]Σ[superscript +]|v = 0,J = 0⟩ ground state, coherently bridging a binding energy difference of 0.65 eV via stimulated rapid adiabatic passage. The spin-polarized, nearly quantum degenerate molecular gas displays a lifetime longer than 2.5 s, highlighting NaK's stability against two-body chemical reactions. A homogeneous electric field is applied to induce a dipole moment of up to 0.8 D. With these advances, the exploration of many-body physics with strongly dipolar Fermi gases of [superscript 23]Na[superscript 40]K molecules is within experimental reach.